This film takes place in a small town in Alabama during a time of racial strife and injustice. Essentially, every year a group of civil rights activists come down from the North to protest against the discrimination of blacks in order to improve their living conditions and increase voting registration. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with those in power and quite often racial tensions and violence directed by the Ku Klux Klan is often the result. To that effect, when a white woman by the name of "Nancy Poteet" (Linda Evans) is violently raped by a black man, even the extremely pragmatic sheriff "Track Bascomb" (Lee Marvin) has difficulty in restoring the peace. Now, from what I understand, there are two versions of this movie with one lasting about 112 minutes while the other one is about 150 minutes or so. Having seen both I believe the longer-and much more graphic-version is the better of the two simply because the shorter version appears somewhat overly-edited. But even then, there were several other weaknesses which were still quite obvious to include the acting of Richard Burton (as "Breck Stancill") who performed in a rather lackluster manner throughout. Likewise, I thought having Luciana Paluzzi ("Trixie") perform in a role that required a deep Southern accent was also quite strange and as soon as she spoke, I realized her voice had been dubbed over. Be that as it may, having lived in the South during this particular time, I understood some of the dynamics behind this story and for that reason I could probably appreciate this movie better than some. That being said, while I certainly understand any negative criticisms-especially in regard to the highly-edited condensed version-I thought that this was a fairly good film despite the flaws just mentioned and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.
Review of The Klansman
